Morphing composite drone

Successful flight test of a 3D printed morphing composite drone

A team at Laboratory of Composite Materials and Adaptive Structures (CMASLab) at ETH Zurich collaborated with the ETH Spin-off 9T Labs to develop and manufacture a 3D printed morphing composite drone. The drone uses morphing for roll, pitch, and yaw control on the main wing and the empennage. After verifying the structure with static tests, a flight test was performed, showing the high maneuverability of the drone.

The Master’s student Leo Baumann extended a 3D printer from 9T Labs to fabricate the complete structure of a morphing drone. The doctoral students Urban Fasel and Dominic Keidel supported the project with their inputs for aeroelastic interactions and morphing concepts. The work resulted in a fully functional drone, which shows excellent performance and was successfully flown. The manufacturing procedure and the design of the drone were published in the journal Manufacturing Letters. The team would like to thank 9T Labs for the great collaboration and Leo Gruber from the Modellfluggruppe Dübendorf for the piloting of the aircraft during the maiden flight.